Whether you are a user of Cortana or not, the digital assistant appears to be here to stay for the long haul. Security researchers Tal Be’ery and Amichai Shulman have found that Cortana is able to respond to commands even when computers are sleeping or locked. This has opened up some creative avenues for malicious individuals to take advantage of.

With the help of Cortana, a web browser can be opened and instructed to navigate to an insecure website. From there, malware can be installed on the target machine and obtain full access to the computer. Meanwhile, the computer appears to remain locked despite the fact that programs are able to be executed remotely by an attacker.